“In Heaven there’ll be no algebra,
No learning dates or names,
But only playing golden harps
And reading Henry James.”
~Displayed at James’s home, Lambs House in Rye and said to have been written by Henry James’s nephew in the guest book there.

I doubt this little jingle is an accurate description of heaven, but if it were, then it would follow that even though such a heaven would be bereft of higher mathematics, it would involve a great deal of thinking. One can’t read Henry James without thinking, carefully. For instance, I found this excerpt of criticism by James, concerning William Morris’s poem The Life and Death of Jason, to be quite amusing after I thought about it and figured out what James was actually saying. (Maybe I liked it partly because I’m also not a fan of Mr. Swinburne.):

“Mr. Morris’s poem is ushered into the world with a very florid birthday speech from the pen of the author of the too famous Poems and Ballads,—a circumstance, we apprehend, in no small degree prejudicial to its success. But we hasten to assure all persons whom the knowledge of Mr. Swinburne’s enthusiasm may have led to mistrust the character of the work, that it has to our perception nothing in common with this gentleman’s own productions, and that his article proves very little more than that his sympathies are wiser than his performance. If Mr. Morris’s poem may be said to remind us of the manner of any other writer, it is simply of that of Chaucer; and to resemble Chaucer is a great safeguard against resembling Swinburne.”

I want to steal (borrow?) James’s template sometime and use it in my own reviews, for example: “XYZ fantasy novel reminds me of Tolkien and Lewis, and so even though its writing has been compared in reviews to that of contemporary and less talented fantasy authors, to resemble Tolkien and Lewis is a great safeguard against modernity.”

So happy birthday to Henry James, who resembles no other author, really, and has been called by readers and critics, the Master. His books and other works do require effort and some thought to be appreciated, but that’s certainly not a bad thing. It depends on the reader as to whether you think James is worth the effort.

Links and thinks for Henry James:

William Faulkner on Henry James: “One of the nicest old ladies I ever met.”

Ernest Hemingway on Henry James and his novels: “Knowing nothing about James, it seems to me to be the s–t.” Also, “he wrote nice but he lived pretty dull I think. Too dull maybe and wrote too nice about too dull.”

LOST Reading Project: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.

Oscar Wilde: “Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.”

Christopher Beha, James and the Great YA Debate: “So few other writers offer the particular pleasures that James does.”

From Portrait of a Lady:

“It has made me better loving you. . . it has made me wiser, and easier, and brighter. I used to want a great many things before, and to be angry that I did not have them. Theoretically, I was satisfied. I flattered myself that I had limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to have morbid sterile hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I really am satisfied, because I can’t think of anything better. It’s just as when one has been trying to spell out a book in the twilight, and suddenly the lamp comes in. I had been putting out my eyes over the book of life, and finding nothing to reward me for my pains; but now that I can read it properly I see that it’s a delightful story.”

Top 10 Henry James novels by Michael Gorra, Publisher’s Weekly.

Henry James on life: “To take what there is in life and use it, without waiting forever in vain for the preconceived, to dig deep into the actual and get something out of that; this, doubtless, is the right way to live.”

And, finally, a quotation that seems to epitomize James’s approach to writing and to the United States. (He moved to England and lived most of his adult life there.): “I hate American simplicity. I glory in the piling up of complications of every sort. If I could pronounce the name James in any different or more elaborate way I should be in favour of doing it.”

If Mr. James’s novels may be said to remind us of the manner of any other writer, it is not an American author. And to resemble no other American author is a great safeguard against resembling Hemingway.